The New York City Record review by Kurt Gottschalk

Various Artists – I Never Meta Guitar: Solo Guitars for the XXI Century (CFG 005)There are many adjectives that could be put on the right hand side of the slash, just after “guitarist/” that precedes Elliott Sharp’s name. He is a slash-composer, slash-inventor and something of a slash-ambassador. But despite his variety of projects, his reputation as a guitarist of remarkable precision and innovation will no doubt remain for what he’s most known.
Sharp is also something of an advocate for musical experimentation, as seen through the four State of the Union records he compiled and produced in the ‘80s-90s. Those records began as a who’s-who of Downtown music and expanded to a valuable international compendium. On I Never Meta Guitar, Sharp curates astate of the union of adventurous guitarists of different nations and generations and in so doing programs a listenable and enjoyable collection. The disc opens with an excellent solo piece by Mary Halvorson, swelling from finger-pattern to overdrive and goes onto include Jeff Parker multi-tracking and filtering himself into an appealing glitchdom, Henry Kaiser apparently playing six guitars simultaneously and Mike Cooper covering Ornette Coleman, along with tracks by Noël Akchoté, Nels Cline, Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Mick Barr. (Apparently, as in Keith Rowe’s guitar quartet, the guitarists don’t necessarily need to play guitar: Raoul Björkenheim is heard on electric viol de gamba and Brandon Ross picks a six-string banjo.)
Sharp himself gets the last word, on his eight-string guitarbass with delay, which seems appropriate enough. Even with all his work here as composer, producer and saxophonist, he is in the end a guitarist’s guitarist.